This highly variable annual may be prostrate with a 6-inch tall single  stem or have a 2-foot tall branching stem, but both have a tight, spherical clusters of reddish to cream-colored flowers. Leaves have a fuzzy covering of hoary hairs.

FLOWERS: Spring to fall depending on rains. Dense spherical clusters, flowers 1/8–3/16-inch (3-4.5 mm) long and wide with 6 petal-like tepals, creamy colored maturing reddish to white with a red midstripe. The 3–6 leaf-like bracts below flower cluster are hairy, lance-shaped, to 3/8-inch (2–10 mm) long.

LEAVES: Basal and alternate on stem. Basal leaves woolly-hairy with stems (petioles) reaching 2 3/8-inches (6 cm) long with oval blades 3/8–1 1/2-inches (1–4 cm) long and wide. Stem leaves woolly-hairy, stemless (sessile), linear to narrowly oval, 3/8–1 1/2-inches (1–4 cm) long.

HABITAT: Sandy, gravelly, clay soils; desert shrublands, grasslands, foothills, pinyon-juniper woodlands.

ELEVATION: 3,800–7,000 feet.

RANGE: AZ, NM, TX.

SIMILAR SPECIES: NM has about 43 species of buckwheat, many similar. James Buckwheat, E. jamesii, statewide, also has whorled leaf-like bracts below the flower cluster but  has white flowers with stamen longer then the petals.

NM COUNTIES: Southern half and central NM in low- to mid-elevation, dry habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Chaves, Dona Ana, Eddy, Grant, Hidalgo, Lincoln, Luna, Otero, Roosevelt, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro.